STEM LEARNING BY MEANS OF MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY. EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF AUGMENTING CLASSROOM LEARNING WITH SITUATED SIMULATIONS AND PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES ON LOCATION G. Liestøl, O. Smørdal, O. Erstad University of Oslo (NORWAY) Abstract We have found ourselves exploring digital technology to support rich environments for experiential learning and shared inquires for science education. There are two emergent trends that challenge current understanding of shared environments: One is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and can be interpreted as hybrids in real time. The other is the merging of embodied experiences at field trips with the activities in the science classroom to produce fun, engaging, and reflective experiences. Further, these environments are inherently social, facilitating dialogue and social exchange. We report from an experiment with situated simulations in a 9th grade science class. The results are promising in terms of student engagement and students’ ability to connect experiential learning to curricular subjects on many levels. Keywords: STEM learning, situated learning, situated simulation, mobile augmented reality, climate change, environmental issues, mobile learning. 1 INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND There is increased attention in education research to improve STEM learning by connecting classroom activities with field trips, for doing e.g. observations and data gathering in the local vicinity of the school. This may result in improved environmental awareness, STEM relevance and engagement with students. For educational and media research, advances in mobile computing, sensory input, and locative media create new opportunities for designing and studying situated learning that is contextualized both by location (e.g. at site close to the school), and mobile augmented reality (e.g. providing STEM related tasks and simulations). The authors have designed and developed and user tested a dynamic 3D and visually rich situated simulation of climate change, which is shared online for a group of students, so they may inquire and discuss consequences of climate change on a specific location. The simulation and means of communication is implemented as a mobile augmented reality application running on a mobile device (smartphones and tablets) that takes advantage of sensory information about position, movement, and orientation. Together with a STEM teacher we designed a pedagogical plan for using the app in the classroom and during a field trip to gather experience about new sets of constraints and potential capacities for connecting experiential and experimental learning to curricular goals. We evaluated this approach with a full class of 9th grade school children. In the following we will describe the technological platform involved. We also provide video analysis of the on-site trial. In addition we consider examples from their documentation and communication activity on location and how these were reused and co-constructed in the group presentations. Finally, we explain these activities in the context of situated learning approaches, and discuss how these theories may adjust to appropriately account for such learning activities and applications of mobile media. The paper ends with a discussion of implications for curriculum design and suggestions for how such experiments may enrich our opportunities for advancing collaboration and problem solving that is situated and enriched with STEM representations and other resources. Proceedings of EDULEARN15 Conference 6th-8th July 2015, Barcelona, Spain ISBN: 978-84-606-8243-1 6515